


Everything left unsaid.

by fate_incomplete



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-02-09
Updated: 2012-02-09
Packaged: 2017-11-11 11:09:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/477900
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fate_incomplete/pseuds/fate_incomplete
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John sometimes forgot what a normal life was like, though possibly, as Sherlock would have claimed, it would be boring. He knew he wouldn't swap his life for normal. He would even keep the pain, if losing it meant forgetting the most frustrating, brilliant man he had ever known, all the conversations they had, and never will again.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Everything left unsaid.

"Sherlock, just sit down and watch the bloody movie."

Sherlock was standing on the couch, gesticulating with his hands as he explained his theory again. John could actually feel his blood pressure rising, could feel the slight beat of his pulse in the tips of his ears to the point it was almost painful.

John was only distantly aware of the words coming out of Sherlock's mouth, vaguely offensive, no, actually downright insulting words. If Sherlock dumbed down his explanation any further, John thought he may actually follow through with the idle fantasy where he finally snapped and killed Sherlock.

He glared across the coffee table, imagining the sting as his knuckles connected with that angular jaw, punching hard and upwards, angling the blow to avoid teeth, yet sufficient to snap the head backwards. He pictured the back of Sherlock's head hitting the wall and for once shutting him up; actually loss of consciousness was a possibility.

"Are you even listening?" Sherlock asked, jolting John out of thoughts of justified violence.

"No, not really."

"I said, the angle was all wrong. The idiot they arrested couldn't possibly have done it. Do I have to explain it again?"

"I was a soldier Sherlock, I do know a thing or two about shooting people."

"Then why did I have to do the diagram?"

"You didn't, actually, and if you keep drawing on the wall we're going to have to re-wallpaper it."

"So you agree then?"

"It's a movie Sherlock. It doesn't matter if I agree or not. I should really find a normal person to live with," John said as he used his fingers to try and ease that ache behind his left temple that only a bored Sherlock seemed capable of inducing.

"Why?"

"Why?" John repeated, exasperated even further. _Maybe a hammer to the temple would be better_. "Because the schizophrenic who lives down the street with six cats is more normal than you!" John said as headed out the door, abandoning the movie as a lost cause.

"You know I wouldn't be reduced to watching obviously implausible movies if you stopped hiding my cigarettes. Or found us an interesting case!" Sherlock yelled after him.

.......................

John tried to drown out the noise as Sherlock tapped away on the keyboard, yelling at the screen now and then as he pointed out the errors in Wikipedia.

"Can't you do that somewhere else?" John asked.

"Probably."

"I just want to be alone."

"John, you could be alone in a crowded room."

"What?"

"You could walk down a street and have no one see you, have them all look right through you."

"What exactly does that have to do with you pissing me off right now?"

"Nothing, just an observation."

"An observation?"

"Yes," Sherlock said, looking at John, into him, perhaps seeing more than John was comfortable with. "Every single person going about their mundane lives is alone."

"No, they're not, they have family, friends, work colleagues," John argued half-heartedly.

"And what do you have?"

John looked away, staring out the window, the word _you_ hanging in the air. "Could you just sod off for five minutes?"

"No."

"No?"

Sherlock didn't answer, going back to whatever it was he was reading.

John sighed. He could go out, walk the street, find a nice empty bench in a park somewhere. He had spent the afternoon pouring his sister into a cab after she had called, too drunk to find her own way home. He was tired.

He looked back at Sherlock, lips tight, refusing to admit that Sherlock was right. He could be alone in crowded room. Alone wasn't what he wanted.

.......................

"Is that a congealed eyeball?"

John really didn't know what was more disturbing, the blood-soaked crime scene, or the look of utter fascination as Sherlock picked up the eyeball, squeezing it experimentally.

"Is that really necessary?" John asked.

"Still viscous, lack of blood, removed post mortem, but not by much."

"Okay, and that tells us what exactly?"

"That the man was dead when his eyeball was removed, obviously."

.......................

John didn't bother to look up as Sherlock appeared beside him. "Aren't you meant to be working on a case for Lestrade?"

"Boring."

"Why are you even here?" John asked two minutes later, after Sherlock settled next to him on the bench.

"Why are any of us here?"

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"That detached thing, where you deflect everything."

"I'm sorry."

At the unexpected apology, John finally looked across as Sherlock.

"How did you know?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"Not really," John replied, glad that Sherlock was happy to forgo showing off just this once.

It had been an hour since John had the phone call to tell him Corporal Davis had been killed in Afghanistan. They had been in the same unit for two years.

They sat in silence, watching the cars stream past.

"Thank you," John said after several minutes.

"For what."

_For being here_..."I don't know."

.......................

"What are you doing?" John asked as he walked into the kitchen, still not quite awake.

"Experimenting with the explosive capacity of our dishwashing liquid."

"Why?"

"We're out of tea."

"So you decided to build a bomb?"

"What else was I meant to do?"

John shook his head, lost for words, wondering if it was too late to go back to bed and pretend a genius maniac wasn't trying to blow up the flat with him in it. It probably was. He went out and bought tea instead.

.......................

_The stuff that you wanted to say. But didn't say it. Say it now_. John could hear his therapist's voice still.

He stared out the window as London passed by, flashes of colour bleeding together in a blur as life continued on. Mrs Hudson sat next to him. He could see her hands fidgeting in her lap out of the corner of his eye, twisting a handkerchief around her fingers before flattening it out again.

There wasn't one thing John wished he had said to his friend. There were a thousand. A thousand conversations, glares, smiles, slammed doors, laughs. All the things he would never be able to say again, all those shared moments where Sherlock just got him like no one else ever had, which would never happen again, that was what he wanted to say, to have, more than anything.

The cab turned a corner, slowing down as it went through a gate. Trees and an endless expanse of grass dotted with tombstones passing by. Everything felt like it had slowed down, even as the world spun out of kilter.

_You need to get it out_ , his therapist's voice continued in his head.

He heard Mrs Hudson take a deep breath as the cab pulled up. They both stared out at the cemetery, neither making a move to get out just yet. He reached across and took one of her hands in his, not sure if the touch was for her or for him. His fingers were numb, barely registering the warmth of her hand, but she smiled briefly.

_You could walk down a street and have no one see you_. John knew no one else would ever see him as Sherlock had.

Words were meaningless, without someone there to hear them. John said them anyway, with only the cold of a headstone to heed them.

.......................


End file.
